Widescreen Gaming Forum

We as users know that quad cfx 5970 + 5970 with eyefinity is a complet broken mess with fps being crippled beyond belief for some unknown reason even though this config of 5970 + 5970 works fine when just using a single monitor.

Tri fire 5970 + 5870 and 3 x 5870 again are completely broken when using an eyefinity setup but also work fine when using just a single monitor.

The question to AMD/ATI is this; do they know about this issue? I ask this because according to another user of quad cfx dual 5970 + eyefinity who sent a support ticket to ATI regarding this issue and got this reply - AMD support claims there is no known performance problem with Eyefinity + 2x 5970 in crossfire.
......the thread is here http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33961074

Also one of the mods and an AMD beta tester from Rage3D states; I don't believe the HD 5970 was ever promoted as Eyefinity Crossfire capable with more than one card?
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so if thats the case then why promote the 5970 as an eyefinity ready card and even put a physical crossfire connector on the card!

Realy like Dave Bauman to step in here and give a difinitive answer on this as to whether this issue is going to be resolved or whether they will remain mute about the problem so as to not impact future sales of the 5970.

So, do two 5870's work in Crossfire? Does it break at 3+ GPUs?

"Works" Yes, but not as it should. The Frames are a laggy mess. They jerk all over the place.

I'm sure it will work properly eventually ... remember EF is still very, very new as a gaming technology

I'm looking at the 5870 and 5970 cards I have here. How do you set them up in CFX? The 5870 has two connectors on the top, and the 5970 only has one. Could that be part of the problem?

I'm looking at the 5870 and 5970 cards I have here. How do you set them up in CFX? The 5870 has two connectors on the top, and the 5970 only has one. Could that be part of the problem?

To set up the 5970 + 5870 in CFX you need the 5970 in the top primary pci-e slot and the 5870 in the secondary pci-e slot below it and use the crossfire bridge connectot between the two cards.

about the numbers of connectors on the 5970 and 5870 being different I don't think that has anything to do with the problems being illustrated in this thread.

Hey there,

I am in the same situation. I have sent AMD numerous tickets. My first response was rejected by AMD for "inappropriate" language. My second response was a link to 10.2 drivers and a scolding for using caps! Also, this was useless because I was already using 10.2.

My final response was as follows:

"AMD Engineering is working on issues with Eyefinity and CrossFire, unfortunately there is no way to confirm when a specific fix will be issued.

Do you have any issues running either of the 5970's as a single card in the sysetm with poor performance in games using Eyefinity?"

Followed by:

"Please provide the information below, I will get this escalated, but I belive it may be a driver update that will resolve the issue.

What power supply do you have in your system? If applicable, are you connected to the video card with native matching connections from the power supply or are adapters used?

Are there any updates available from your motherboard manufacturer for your Motherboard BIOS or chipset drivers?

In the Windows Device Manager is anything listed with an X ? or ! beside it? What do you list in the Displays Adapters and Sound Video and Game Controllers section of the Device Manager?

Is this a recent development with the system? Have you ever been able to use the system without this issue? If so what hardware/software changes have happened in the system from when it worked properly to when it started having problems?

Was the video card preinstalled in the system or purchased separately and added to the system?

If you have upgraded the video card have any other components been upgraded or added in the system since it was purchased?

To assist you please send us the following reports from your system.
(Dxdiag report, Belarc Advisor system report, MSINFO32 Report)

Please create all the reports and attach them to this ticket."

After sending the correct info, they responded with:

"We will be releasing newer drivers that may solve the issue that you are getting. Make sure to remove older drivers first and disable background applications before installing (instructions below).

To restart your computer by using a clean boot procedure, follow these steps:

Make sure to disable any and all programs running in the background.To restart your computer by using a clean boot procedure, follow the link provided to do it for your OS:

>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796"

These measures had absolutely NO effect.

Personally, I don't think AMD will EVER get this setup working properly. From my experience, AMD will "just" get things working till 6xxx series cards are released.

At the moment, Cat 10.3 pre seems to run best at a steady 10fps across the board. Cat 10.3a pre was worse IMO. Hardly anything to write home about.

Being an early adopter has its pitfalls, BUT shouldnt this have worked "out of the box" BEFORE AMD "trumped up" Eyefinity? I'm aware AMD promised "crossfire support in Eyefinity with future updates" (ie 9.12 hotfix), BUT does going from 0fps to 10fps constitute support after 4 Cat releases?

I try to read every post and article I can lay my eyes on regarding eyefinity and I came across the answer to this issue just last week. I can't remember what the source was right now (I think it was either a post from Dave Baumann or it was in a techreport article). But the answer given was that the issue causing the performance problems with crossfire and eyefinity was a lack of bandwidth in the crossfire bridge connection. It was said to be only engineered to handle a maximum of 2560x1600 resolution, and when going over that (as would be the case with eyefinity) there are performance bottlenecks with cross-card communications because of this. I'll try to find again the post or article where I saw this.

Edit: I found it. Its on page 2 of this article:

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/18521/2

Here is the snippet I'm referring to:

"The core issue is the fact that the dedicated CrossFire interconnect
used for passing completed frames between cards has "only" enough bandwidth
to sustain a 2560x1600 display resolution. Even three 1080p displays will
exceed its capacity."

So the answer to the question: "5970 + 5970 + eyefinity: Will it ever work?" is probably something along the lines of: "Although it will be tweaked to work as well as possible by the good engineering folks at AMD, it will continue to suck until the crossfire bridge connection is re-engineered to support higher (eyefinity) resolutions."

Hopefully the bridge connector will be re-designed for the next generation of Radeon cards. Until that happens, this will continue to be AMD's "dirty little secret" regarding eyefinity.

Thanks for the heads up.

When I first heard about user reports of crossfired 5970s + eyefinity performing extremely poor I became very worried. Then last week my hopes were completely smashed when I read about the crossfire bridge bandwidth limitation in the tech report article. That means that my fondest dreams of running a 5970 + 5970 + 5 x 30" monitor in portrait mode setup would definitely have no hope of working in this generation of Radeon cards. And furthermore, my current three 30" monitors may not even be viable because of this. The only hope right now is to avoid the crossfire connector by using a single 5970 card and to maximize its performance by using an as-yet-unreleased 4GB version that is overclocked as high as it can go (c'mon 1000 Mhz core!)

This is why I've decided not to go with the ATI cards...

I was considering them as a solution to my multi monitor woes, but currently I have Tri-SLI GTX260s, so a single 5870 would be a downgrade, and I'd prefer 3 5870s to a 5890 or whatever (Damn things are long, plus Tri-whatever seems to scale better than Quad-whatever, for ATI and nVidia, IMO)

HOWEVER... if ATI can fix this, maybe I'll consider them eventually if my attempts to get my Mview box working continue to fail. After all, Eyefinity should scale better than the Nvidia equivalent IN THEORY due to all 3 monitors being on the one card.

So yeah... you listening ATI? You're losing customers over this. Oh, the lack of custom crossfire profiles is a deal breaker too.

"The core issue is the fact that the dedicated CrossFire interconnect
used for passing completed frames between cards has "only" enough bandwidth
to sustain a 2560x1600 display resolution. Even three 1080p displays will
exceed its capacity."

If this is true, then what hardware are they using when they demo 6 x 30" displays?

Just the one Eyefinity6 card presumably. I don't think Eyefinity works with one display group across multiple cards. Not yet anyway :)

The limitation in the Crossfire link (if true) is why Crossfire Eyefinity scales so badly. That is the point... 3 1080p monitors generate too much bandwidth for the Crossfire cable to handle. That's how I interpret the statement. It's much slower to send the data via the PCI-E link. The 5970 doesn't have as much of a problem with this as it's chips are physically closer and connected via a bridge chip, so they can 'talk' more easily.

you left out the next part of the article:

"Using PCIe works, but it can limit performance scaling somewhat—don't expect to see the near-linear scaling one might get out of a dual-card setup in the right game with a single display. That's not to say mixing CrossFire with Eyefinity won't be worth doing. Based on AMD's performance estimates, frame rates could improve between about 25% and 75% when adding a second GPU with a 12-megapixel, six-monitor array."

i don't know about the 5970 + 5870, but this seems to indicate that 5870 in CF will net some gains. It is good that I came across this though as I was about to go out and drop the cash on a second 5870. Think I will wait for some more benchmarks and newer drivers.

? is how could they not test and know this when they made the 5870 card? Why didn't they fix the Crossfire bridge issue then?

the more i think about it, you must only be referring to quad-fire (2x5970).

Because, I just came across some more benchmarks which shows huge gains going from 5870 to 5870x2.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/metro_2033_performance_guide,10.html

My apologies if i posted a response in ignorance to your original ?.

TF

For what it's worth, my 5870 E6 cards in CFX work just fine. I have them connected with two CFX links. Maybe that is solving the bandwidth issue.

For what it's worth, my 5870 E6 cards in CFX work just fine. I have them connected with two CFX links. Maybe that is solving the bandwidth issue.

I'm willing to try anything ... I just attached a 2nd CFX link, I'll try firing up CFX on BC2 again @ 3x30".

the more i think about it, you must only be referring to quad-fire (2x5970).

Because, I just came across some more benchmarks which shows huge gains going from 5870 to 5870x2.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/metro_2033_performance_guide,10.html

My apologies if i posted a response in ignorance to your original ?.

TF

Yeah, they show huge gains @ 1680x1050 :doh

crap... you are right. my head is not screwed on right.

guess i will wait a bit longer before getting that second 5870.

[quote]For what it's worth, my 5870 E6 cards in CFX work just fine. I have them connected with two CFX links. Maybe that is solving the bandwidth issue.

I'm willing to try anything ... I just attached a 2nd CFX link, I'll try firing up CFX on BC2 again @ 3x30".
What cards are you running, two 5870's?